


And at last, summer

by ravenbringslight



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Car Accidents, Coming of Age, First Kiss, First Time, Hair Brushing, Hand Jobs, Introspection, Love, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Rimming, Sibling Incest, There is fooling around but no sex until Loki is 18, When this starts Loki is 17 and Thor is 18, Whether you consider this underage is up to your discretion, cute boys being cute, trying for melancholy but sliding into melodrama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-25 01:01:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9795317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenbringslight/pseuds/ravenbringslight
Summary: It’s 7:03 on a Tuesday morning the summer he turns 17 when Loki realizes he’s in love with his brother.





	1. first kiss

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't actually decided if I want to write any more chapters of this or not, but maybe?
> 
> I was listening to [Explosions in the Sky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzj-ksNOMfU) while writing this, if you want a little mood music.
> 
> Visit me at <https://raven-brings-light.tumblr.com/>.

It’s 7:03 on a Tuesday morning the summer he turns 17 when Loki realizes he’s in love with his brother. They’re getting breakfast ready. Thor is scrambling eggs and Loki is setting the plates on the table, when he looks up to see Thor standing at the stove burner, stirring gently as the eggs turn from translucent to opaque, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, his hair a messy golden cloud, and it’s a sight Loki has seen a thousand times before but this time he is completely struck dumb. 

The sudden realization sinks like a stone into him, all the way through his brain and his chest to his stomach, and lodges there. They go on with their day like normal, breakfast, art camp for Loki, soccer for Thor, back home for lunch and naps and video games. But that stone is there, rattling around in Loki’s stomach like the rocks in a bird’s gizzard, whittling and grinding away at anything it comes in contact with.

Their parents come home around dinner time. These late summer nights they usually eat outside, light a fire in the chiminea, Frigga and Odin unwinding with a drink or three, Frigga sometimes even letting Thor and Loki have a bit with a twinkle in her eye. Loki loves those nights. He loves the dusk settling around them slowly like a blanket while they drink and laugh, loves the little points of pulsing light as the fireflies wake, the smell of the citronella candle mingling with the smoke from the chiminea, the feeling that the twilight could stretch on forever.

Tonight though he eats the bare minimum and excuses himself the second he can. The stone in his stomach is so large he has no idea how he was able to eat anything at all. Thor looks at him as he flees, a question, and Loki can only shake his head. _It’s fine, I’m ok._ But he’s not ok. So he grabs his sketchbook and swings himself out the window of his bedroom and tucks himself into the space between the gable and the chimney where no one can see him from the ground, and it’s just him and his sketchbook and the stars.

Thor finds him later, because Thor always finds him, but the night and the drawing have cleared his head a little.

“Hey, move over,” Thor says, and then he is pushing next to Loki, arm to arm and thigh to thigh. His shoulders have gotten broader over the last year and he almost can’t squeeze in. There were so many places they used to fit into together as children that were now too small for them with their not-quite-men’s bodies, and Loki supposes that is an apt a metaphor as any for their lives right now.

“What are you drawing?” Thor asks. Loki shows him the latest one, a safe one, a person with a candle in the hollow of their head illuminating their eyes from the inside out, twined all around with vines and flowers. “Lo, this is so good. You should design tattoos.”

“Mm,” Loki says. “I guess.”

“Hey, what’s wrong? You were quiet at dinner too.”

“Nothing. I’m just in a weird mood tonight.”

Thor puts his hand on Loki’s knee and kisses his temple. Loki holds his breath without realizing it, then lets it out in a huff.

“I’ll leave you alone if you want,” Thor says. His fingers are tracing a circle on Loki’s knee around the frayed edges of a tiny rip in his jeans. 

“You can stay,” says Loki, and is surprised to find he means it. “Here, turn your face like this, let me draw you.”

He grabs Thor’s chin and moves him into the position he wants, profiled against the stars with the moonlight shining on his face in a way that highlights his brow, his cheekbones, and gives a glimpse into the future of what his face might look like as a grown man.

He sketches Thor in short strokes, choppy and messy, spending particular time on the eyes and the set of his mouth. He shows it to Thor when he’s done.

“Seriously, you are so good,” Thor says. “Look at this. It looks more like me than I do. How do you do that?”

“Practice,” Loki says. “Also it’s easier to draw things you love.”

He’s mentally kicking himself the second the words leave his mouth, but Thor just smiles. Of course he does. He’s Thor. He’s used to it. Everyone loves Thor. Loving Thor is as natural as breathing.

“You are going to have your pick of art colleges,” Thor is saying. “They’re going to be fighting over you.”

Loki smiles. “I admire your optimism,” he says. “But I think I’m probably gonna end up doing what you said before...I’ll end up in a tattoo shop somewhere drawing like anchors and swallows and shit.”

“Nope,” Thor says. “I forbid you to waste this talent on anchors and swallows.”

“You forbid me, huh?”

“Yep.”

“How are you going to stop me?”

“Well I’m bigger. And I’m stronger. Also, I know where you’re ticklish.” Thor goes for Loki’s ribs and soon Loki is squirming and laughing helplessly.

“I yield!” he laughs. “Jesus, Thor.” 

They lapse into companionable silence. Loki is poking his finger into the hole in his knee now. He can see two of his leg hairs peeking through it. Thor is breathing quietly next to him. He wants this moment to last forever, the two of them together in the darkness, easy, pressed together, perfect. But he can still feel the stone in his gut and he can already feel the moment swinging away from him, going wrong at the edges.

“I don’t want you to leave in the fall,” he says abruptly. “How am I supposed to stay here in this house without you?”

“It’s only for a year,” Thor says. “And I’ll visit home and you can visit me at school. And then next year you can come too.”

“That seems so far away,” Loki says softly.

“Is that why you’re feeling weird tonight?”

“Maybe. Part of it. I don’t know.”

“I’m going to miss you too,” Thor says, leaning his head against Loki’s. “I am a little excited though.”

This time Loki kisses Thor’s temple and he tries to stop his lip from trembling by pressing it harder into Thor’s skin. He feels tears prick his eyes.

“Do all brothers do this?” he whispers.

“Do what?”

“This.” Loki gestures broadly at both of them.

“I don’t know. We do. Why?”

Loki shrugs. He has so many words inside of him but his throat is so tight that they’re all trapped. He can feel them in the muscles of his neck. He’s almost glad that he can’t talk and that this thing inside of him that he is so close to revealing can remain secret for awhile longer. 

“Lo, baby, what is it?”

Loki can only shake his head mutely. Thor grabs the back of his head and kisses his forehead. Loki closes his eyes and focuses on breathing, but Thor’s mouth is so warm against his skin. Thor kisses the corner of his eye and then his cheek, so gently, so delicately. Loki can’t help the hitch in his breath. He knows his brother is smarter than most people give him credit for, but he wonders how Thor figured it out so quickly. 

“Is this ok?” Thor says quietly. Loki nods helplessly.

Hesitantly, Thor kisses the corner of Loki’s mouth. Loki leans into it, and then his treacherous body is turning his head slightly, and their lips meet. It’s for no more than an instant, but electricity sparks wildly down to the tips of Loki’s toes, to his marrow, to his soul.

Thor is looking at him, eyes wide and so dark in the moonlight that Loki can hardly see the blue. “Did you feel -”

“Yeah,” Loki breathes. The night has gone quiet around them. It’s too cold for the t-shirts they’re wearing and his ass is falling asleep. He shivers.

“We should go inside,” Thor says.

They clamber through Loki’s window, long limbs and awkward angles. Their parents are long asleep, so they get ready for bed quietly, brushing their teeth with the barest trickle of water, peeing against the side of the toilet bowl so the water doesn’t splash.

They pause in the hallway, Thor’s room on one side and Loki’s on the other.

“Well. Good night,” Loki finally says, chafing his arms with hands gone clammy from nerves.

Thor wraps him in a hug, pinning his arms to his sides. He pulls back a little so their noses are touching. Loki is still a few inches shorter than Thor, but they’re close enough in height that Thor doesn’t need to stoop. “Can I?” Thor says, and when Loki nods he kisses him again. It lasts for more than a second this time, their lips moving against each other in patterns at once familiar and unfamiliar. “Good night,” Thor whispers.

Loki locks his door behind him. He grabs the lotion off his desk and takes his prick in his hand, and when he comes it’s with thoughts of his brother in his head.


	2. first touch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are more explicit in this chapter. Loki is 17 and Thor is 18. Please feel free to give this one a miss if that bothers you.

Thor has been in love with his brother their whole lives. He didn’t realize it when they were smaller, but now in retrospect it’s obvious to him. Once in his junior year one of his teachers had brought up the concept of synergy, of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, and ah yes, Thor had thought. That describes me and Loki perfectly. Separately they were just two insignificant atoms aimlessly bumping around; together they produced an exothermic reaction that rivaled the sun.

It’s 5:30 in the morning and Thor can hear the garage door rumble open and closed as their parents leave for work. He stares at a crack in the ceiling, following its familiar contours with his eyes. He could probably draw it from memory. Light footsteps in the hall mean Loki is awake too. Thor has always thought that Loki just sort of skims over the ground when he walks, his slight body and dreamer’s brain not tethering him to the earth the way Thor is. Thor hears the toilet flush.

“Hey,” Thor says, hoping his voice makes it through the crack in the door. The footsteps stop and the door creaks open until he can see one green eye and a fall of curly black hair. “C’mere.” He lifts a corner of his blanket.

Loki pads over and slips in beside him.

“How are you so cold, it’s summer,” Thor says, rubbing Loki’s arms. Loki is wearing a t-shirt and boxers and his flesh is chill to the touch. Thor is shirtless and putting heat out like a radiator. It’s just another way they fit together.

Loki butts his head up under Thor’s chin and snuggles into his chest. They fall back asleep until the alarm wakes them at 7.

Today is the same as yesterday, breakfast and morning camp. Thor drops Loki off at the community college for art, then continues on to the park for soccer. He’s a sweaty disaster by the time lunch comes. 

He takes a cold shower while Loki makes them sandwiches. They eat standing next to each other at the counter, occasionally knocking into each other’s shoulders and smiling. In the time it takes Loki to eat one sandwich Thor has eaten three, and then he gets the milk from the fridge and chugs it straight from the carton.

He’s pretty sure Loki is staring at his neck while his head is back and his stomach gives a pleased little squirm.

“Nap?” he says, and Loki says, “God, yes.”

The couch in the basement is nearly twice as deep as the one in the living room, and the basement is cooler anyway, so they grab an afghan and head downstairs.

Usually when they pass out in the afternoon it’s with Thor’s head at one end of the couch and Loki’s at the other, but today by some unspoken agreement they face the same direction. Thor wedges himself against the back of the couch and Loki snuggles back into his chest. They fall asleep with Thor’s arm around Loki’s waist.

They wake up when the afternoon sun creeps up and hits them in the face, making the world behind their eyelids glow red. Loki has flipped onto his back at some point. Thor is getting so big that like this there is barely enough room even for Loki’s narrow shoulders, so Loki turns the rest of the way over and wraps his arm around Thor. Thor rubs his back in big circles and feels Loki tremble slightly.

Loki kisses Thor’s jaw, lightly, a question, and when Thor hums happily he kisses it again, moving along the jawline like a fluttering of butterfly wings.

Their lips meet softly and the electricity is there again, just like last night. Thor feels it arc through him. His nipples tighten and harden, tingling. His heart thumps erratically. Synergy, he thinks.

They kiss for a long time, exploring old territory in this new way, mapping each other’s faces with lips and tongues and hands. Loki is panting a little and Thor can see his pulse in his neck. He mouths it and Loki sighs.

“What are we doing?” Loki whispers.

“Loving each other,” Thor says, rubbing their noses together. Loki smiles, a flash of teeth and crinkling eyes.

“What time is it? Mom and Dad -”

“Shit,” Thor says, and grabs his phone off the back of the couch. “We have a half hour,” he says, relaxing.

“Your lips are all red.”

“So are yours.”

“Maybe we should -”

“Ok.”

They kiss one more time and then disentangle themselves.

Frigga and Odin come home and they all pass a perfectly pleasant perfectly ordinary evening together, only neither Thor nor Loki can stop the smiles on their faces when they look at each other. Thor feels their secret stretching between them, a shimmering cord growing and expanding until he’s almost surprised that it’s not visible to the naked eye. Maybe they’ve actually chemically bonded, like atoms do.

“You two are in good moods today,” says Frigga and Thor can only shrug.

“It happens occasionally,” says Loki and they all laugh.

Their parents go to bed at 9:30 leaving the brothers to play video games in the basement. 

Loki is sitting on the floor decapitating zombies and Thor is staring at him. The tendons in Loki’s neck stand in sharp relief as he mashes buttons, moving the controller around as though it will make a difference to what’s happening on the screen. His tongue pokes out from between his teeth as he concentrates. 

Thor reaches over and takes the controller out of his hands.

“Hey asshole, what are you -” But then Thor is kissing him, swallowing his complaints until there are no more left. Loki melts backwards to the ground, drawing Thor down with him.

“Are you sure they’re asleep?” Loki murmurs.

“Probably. They never come down here anyway.”

Thor moves on top of Loki, trying not to squash him with his bulk. Loki winds his arms around Thor’s neck and hooks an ankle around his leg and their cocks brush against each other.

Thor inhales sharply. “Loki,” he says. What they’ve done until now, the cuddling, the kissing, he can pass that off as innocent. Kind of. They’ve always been closer than most brothers are. If they stopped at that, Thor can tell himself that it had all just been a bit of fun. That it doesn’t mean anything more than brotherly affection.

He wants there to be more than brotherly affection. He thinks Loki does too. But…

“Yes,” Loki says, and deliberately brushes against him again. Thor groans.

“We can’t go back from this,” Thor says.

“I don’t want to go back.”

“Are you sure?”

“Are you?”

Thor buries his face in Loki’s neck. There are some things you just can’t say when you’re looking into someone’s eyes. “I’ve wanted you for years,” he admits.

Loki tightens his hold. “Really?” Thor nods against him.

“I want to,” Loki continues. “But it’s kind of scary.”

“Maybe we could…” Thor trails off. Loki strokes his hair. “Maybe we could touch ourselves? Together?”

“Ok,” Loki says.

They kiss again, soft at first, but quickly growing heated. The first time Loki uses his tongue Thor very nearly whimpers. Thor sits back to unbutton his jeans and shove them down to his knees, and underneath him Loki is wriggling out of his.

“Kiss me while you do it,” says Loki.

Thor kneels over Loki and dips his forehead down, looking to where their cocks jut hard between them.

“Oh my god, Loki,” Thor says. “Look at us.”

Loki looks down too and swallows hard.

“Come here,” he says. He drags Thor into a kiss. They both begin stroking themselves. Thor’s precum isn’t really enough lube, but he doesn’t care. He feels Loki moving under him and just the thought of it is nearly enough to make him come immediately. Soon it’s impossible to coordinate the kissing and they just end up breathing and moaning into each other’s mouths.

“Thor, I’m gonna -”

“Yes yes do it.”

Loki arches up with a soft “nnn” and shoots pearly white come onto his own stomach. Thor is watching, and the pressure that had been building inside him suddenly releases and he spills onto Loki’s stomach as well.

“Shit what are we gonna wipe this up with?”

“There’s a box of tissues over there.”

“Ok, don’t move.”

Thor wipes him off and Loki starts giggling.

“Oh my god we smell like sex,” he says.

Thor drapes himself over Loki’s side and inhales.

“Yep.”

They stay there for a little while, their breathing evening out and their eyelids growing heavy.

“Is this real?” Loki says finally.

“Um. What do you mean?”

“I’m not dreaming?”

“Definitely not dreaming,” Thor says, pinching his side. Loki yelps and squirms. “But we should probably go to bed.”

They kiss again in the hallway outside their rooms. Thor wishes Loki could stay with him all night, but he knows that that would be a pretty damn stupid idea. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he says instead. “Come get in bed with me again after Mom and Dad leave.”

Loki flashes that smile at him. “Ok.”

Thor lies in bed for awhile afterwards. He can hear the wind picking up outside, a harbinger of the rain they’re supposed to get tomorrow morning. The tree outside his room squeaks against the glass of the window. He wonders if Loki is still awake too.

Finally he sleeps.


	3. conflagration

July flows by, a rolling wave of liquid sunshine as intoxicating as any alcohol. Their parents have kept them busy by signing them up for activities in the mornings, but the afternoons are theirs and they drink them up until they’re dizzy.

It doesn’t take them long to begin touching each other, bringing each other off in long strokes, in short choppy bursts, in twisting spirals.

The couch in the basement quickly becomes a favorite spot and it’s there that Thor takes Loki into his mouth for the first time. Loki comes almost immediately and when Thor pulls back in surprise he gets a spurt of semen right up his nose. They laugh until their stomachs hurt. When they can breathe again, Loki returns the favor. Thor lasts a little bit longer and when he comes Loki swallows it all down. It tastes like salt and soap and Thor. He loves every drop.

Sometimes they use Thor’s bed after their parents leave for work in the morning, but usually they just sleep.

Loki's sketch book fills up with pictures of Thor. He'd never shied from using his brother as a model, but this new work has an intensity that’s never been there before. Thor in profile, Thor tucking his hair behind his ear and laughing, Thor staring out of the paper with burning eyes, Thor naked on the couch, naked on the bed, naked on the floor. When he's not drawing, Loki takes to hiding his incriminating sketch book inside a bag inside a box, covered with dirty laundry and shoved under his bed and hidden by another box.

Loki thinks he might love Thor more intensely every day and it scares him. It feels wild, raw, needy. Out of his control. It had started as a candle flame and now it’s a forest fire inside of him; he’s afraid they both might be lost in the conflagration. Part of him is scared, but the part that isn’t has a mad desire to see just how brightly they can burn.

“I love you,” Loki says to Thor on a rare rainy afternoon. They’re snuggled together on the couch. Loki is sure that by this time the couch’s DNA must be half them, full of their skin cells and hair and come and sweat all driven deep into its fibers.

“I love you too,” Thor says, easy and bright, and kisses the tip of his nose.

“No, I mean, I really. Love you,” Loki says. “A lot. A lot a lot.”

“Hey,” Thor says and squeezes him tighter. “I know. I love you a lot a lot too. It’s...sometimes it’s so much it’s hard to breathe.”

Loki burrows into Thor’s chest. “I wish we could be together.”

“We are together.”

“You know what I mean.”

Thor rubs Loki’s back. His hands are so big Loki wonders if they could span his whole width. He feels Thor run his fingers along the bumps of his spine and can barely suppress a shudder.

“We just have to take each day as it comes,” Thor says after a moment. “Enjoy the present while we have it.”

“But what about the future?” Loki whispers. “What about when you leave for college next month? And after that?”

“We’ll make it work somehow,” Thor says decisively, his tone final. And here in his arms, safe and protected and loved, Loki can pretend that his words are true.

But merely speaking his doubts has given them form and substance and when he’s not in Thor’s arms they loom large in Loki’s thoughts. August comes and the days are hotter but they aren’t quite as long. Loki’s patience is growing shorter too. Thor’s departure is a circle on the calendar hanging on the fridge, and Loki feels sick every time he sees it. He starts avoiding the kitchen as much as possible and loses two pounds he didn’t have to lose. He feels restless, itchy, like his skin is too small. He starts snapping at everyone, even Thor.

Two days before Thor leaves it’s all too much and he escapes to the roof again for some air.

Thor doesn’t come find him this time. Loki dashes bitter tears from his cheeks. He wanted to be alone, but he wanted Thor to come for him too. The paradox isn't lost on him, but it doesn't make him feel any better.

When he finally climbs back inside his window, Thor is sitting on his bed.

“Hey,” Thor says. “I would have come up but I thought it seemed like maybe you wanted to be alone. So I waited for you here.”

Of course. Perfect Thor, somehow fulfilling both of his competing desires at once.

Loki bursts into tears.

“We can’t do this,” he sobs. Thor grabs his hand and pulls him onto the bed, wraps him in a giant warm fuzzy golden bear hug.

“Can’t do what, Lo,” he says softly.

“We can’t...we can’t be together. You’re leaving and I’m staying, and we’re _brothers_ for god’s sake, no one will ever accept this, how can they, it’s wrong it’s wrong it’s all wrong.” He’s crying so hard now that he can hardly breathe.

“No, no, baby, sweetheart,” Thor murmurs nonsense into his ear, strokes his hair. “It’ll work, it has to work. You can come visit me at school, I’ll kick my roommate out, and I’ll come home every break and maybe some weekends too, and please Loki, don’t cry like this, please.” Thor’s voice is choked by the end.

“I don’t want to be a dirty s-secret,” Loki hiccups. “I want to be yours. I want you to be mine.”

“I am yours. Always,” Thor swears. “I’ll never be anyone else’s. Only yours.” They rock together, clinging. “God, I love you so much. Please don't break up with me.”

And it hurts, it hurts so much, but it also feels good, this wild love. Loki lets Thor kiss the tears from his cheeks and they fall on the bed together, running their hands over each other desperately. He tries not to think of the future, because when he does all he can smell is smoke.

Thor leaves two days later and Loki feels like all the color leaves with him. The trees start to turn red and gold, like they miss Thor too, but like everything else in Loki's life they're muted. It starts raining all the time. Loki doesn't even notice at first because it's so fitting, but then it starts to wear on him, the relentless drip drip dripping.

His last year of high school is a chore. His whole life he'd had his brother in the grade above him to pull him around in his orbit, and without that insistent tug he feels lost. He pictures himself as a lonely little moon spinning off into space. He keeps up with his schoolwork just because it's the only way to avoid attention. He never talks to anyone.

The first week that Thor's gone they fall asleep texting every night. Loki lies in bed with his face illuminated by his phone screen. He imagines Thor doing the same, imagines the emerging cragginess of his cheeks softened by the blue glow. It feels comforting to know that they're both doing the same thing at the same time even though they're 100 miles apart.

Thor gets busier after that and his texts drop off. Loki tries not to panic, but all he can think of is his amazingly beautiful brother surrounded by a bunch of other hormonal teenagers in a mostly unsupervised dorm, and he wants to vomit. How can he compete? He's scrawny and bony and _here_ not there, and he's Thor's _goddamn brother_.

Thor comes home for fall break. Loki is so nervous he's nauseous. Their parents are still at work when Thor's tires crunch on the gravel in the driveway, so when he steps into the house Loki practically launches himself into his arms. He wraps his legs around Thor's waist and his arms around Thor's neck and barely has time to inhale the smell of him before he's showering Thor's face with kisses. Thor clutches him back.

“Oh my god, Lo, I missed you so much,” Thor says, and he's rubbing his cheeks all over Loki, his forehead, butting into him like a cat.

They don't even make it out of the kitchen. Thor sets Loki down and keeps going, pulling his pants to the floor and licking a broad stripe up his cock before taking it into his mouth. Loki fists his hands in Thor's hair.

They hardly leave each other's sides for five minutes the entire time Thor is home.

When he leaves again, it's even harder.


	4. things fall apart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry.

In the seventeen years that they’ve lived together, Thor and Loki have never been apart for more than a week at a time, so Thor has never really had the opportunity to miss his brother before. He thinks that maybe he shouldn’t have saved it all up for one go.

Missing Loki is a full body experience. His lips and tongue and teeth remember the exact curve of Loki’s neck. His arms remember the precise volume of space Loki occupied. His skin remembers the press and slide of Loki’s skin upon it. He learns in bio 101 that your body regenerates its entire epidermal layer in twenty seven days and Thor is hit with the thought that soon he will have no skin left that Loki has touched and he almost starts crying in class.

Thor is an addict and Loki is his drug. He counts the days until he can visit home again.

He makes a few friends. Fandral and Hogun are also freshmen and room together in the unit next to his, and along with Sif from down the hall they like to monopolize the weight room at the gym. They meet Volstagg there, a super senior in his fifth year, and he’s loud but he’s funny, and soon he starts hanging out with them too. Thor is glad to have company to get him out of his own head. When he’s sweating and laughing he’s not thinking. 

Thanksgiving comes and Thor speeds the entire way home. His heart drops when he sees Loki. His hair, normally painstakingly straightened, is too long, too curled, too feral. The circles under his eyes are so dark they look like bruises. Thor is certain that if he lifted Loki’s shirt he could count his ribs. It seems like Loki has grown smaller by the same proportion that Thor has grown larger, some kind of strange conservation of mass. Thor hugs Loki to him, trying to will some of his own health into his brother’s body.

“You look like shit,” he says. He feels Loki’s shoulder blades move in a shrug. 

“I feel like shit, so.”

“Are mom and dad home yet?”

“No, but they’ll be here any minute.”

Thor kisses him, drinks in his breath. He can feel Loki’s lips quiver. “What is it, Lo?”

“Thor, I -”

But then the garage door is opening and they leap apart like they've been burned.

Odin and Loki are watching tv in the other room while Frigga fixes dinner.

“Mom,” Thor says, trying to talk softly so Loki can’t hear. “Is Loki ok? He looks…” Thor trails off with a wave of his hands.

Frigga looks to the living room as if she can see through the wall. “Loki is...unhappy,” she says finally. “Although he won’t tell me why.” She sighs and continues chopping vegetables. “Tip these into the pan for me, would you dear?”

She goes silent for a moment. Thor stares at the linoleum between his feet, frowning.

“I remember how hard being a teenager is so I just try to give him space. He’s always been a bit more withdrawn than you, dear. I do wish he would eat though. Maybe you could talk him into it.”

Loki won’t meet his eyes at dinner. Unlike Loki, Thor eats his stress, so he heaps his plate full.

When Loki excuses himself, Thor gets up to follow him. His mother catches his hand and squeezes it briefly, offers him a small smile.

Thor finds Loki in his room, lying on the bed staring at the ceiling. He closes the door behind him and locks it. Loki turns on his side away from Thor.

“Don’t,” he says.

“Don’t what?” Thor says helplessly.

“I don’t know. Everything.”

Thor sits down next to him and puts a tentative hand on his back.

“What is wrong with us?” Loki whispers.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Thor sighs. “Nothing is wrong with us.”

“How can you say that?” Loki says, choked. “I - shit. I can’t talk. Here.”

He gets up and goes to the closet, rummages around the back of the top shelf until he finds his diary. He thrusts it at Thor. “Read the last page,” he orders. “And don’t laugh.”

Thor flips to the back of the book until he finds the last entry in Loki’s narrow slanted handwriting.

_Thor is coming home tomorrow. I want to scream and cry and maybe throw up._

_I’ve been thinking a lot while he’s been gone. I know that I love him. But he's my brother, I'm supposed to love him._

_I know that I’m **in love** with him. I also know that incest is not a thing that anyone in this society or any other is ever going to accept._

_There I finally said it. Incest. God._

_How is a person supposed to deal with falling in love with their own brother?_

_It hurts so much when he leaves. And it hurts when he’s here because I know it can’t last. I mean honestly what kind of future could we possibly have? Best case scenario is we have to sneak around like criminals for the rest of our lives. Worst case is whatever careers we end up with go down the toilet and we get disowned or ostracized or lynched._

_I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I can barely write. All my drawings are of his stupid face. It’s not healthy. I’m not healthy. We are not healthy._

_I’ve always been kind of a fuck up but I never thought I had this level of depravity in me. And I can’t drag Thor down with me. He deserves to be able to have a happy normal relationship. A family. Kids and a wife or a husband or whatever he wants. God I don't even know if he likes women? How can I not know that?_

_Anyway. I feel like crap every hour of the day. And as long as we continue this relationship or whatever you want to call it it's never going to get better. So I need to suck it up and do the right thing. I don't want to but I need to. God it's going to hurt._

Thor is crying by the time he finishes reading, and Loki is crying too.

“Don't you see?” Loki says.

“No.” Thor shakes his head. “No no no. Please.”

“We have to stop,” Loki says, his voice pleading. “There's no future for us like this.”

Thor stands and gathers Loki to his chest.

“But I love you,” Thor says.

“It's not enough,” Loki whispers.

Thor wishes the ground would crack under their feet and swallow them whole. He feels hot and cold at the same time, sweaty, his vision narrowing.

“No,” he says again.

“Yes,” Loki says gently but firmly.

“Can I- can I have one more kiss?”

“I don't-” Loki starts to say, but Thor is already kissing him, fiercely, desperately. Loki melts into him for a moment, but then he pushes Thor away.

“Get out of here,” he says shakily. “Go.”

Thor reaches for Loki again, but Loki bats his hands away.

“Don't make this harder,” Loki says. Thor stands there with tears running down his cheeks until Loki shoves him in the chest. “I said leave!” he yells. “Leave me alone! Go!”

Thor locks himself in his room and cries until he has no more tears left in his body. He can hear Loki across the hall doing the same thing.


	5. family matters

Loki somehow drags his miserable carcass through the next month into Christmas. He's never had less Christmas cheer in his life, not even the year he found out Santa wasn't real.

Breaking up with Thor had taken every ounce of courage he could muster, and when his great blonde bear of a brother had started crying Loki nearly took it all back. But this was for both of their own good. It was.

It was.

Loki starts painting his nails black and wearing eyeliner. He watches makeup tutorials on youtube obsessively. It distracts him a little bit.

He has seventy six unread messages from Thor on his phone.

He's constantly slightly dizzy. He knows it's from the lack of food. He doesn't care. Food makes his stomach cramp worse than it already does so he eats as little of it as possible.

Sigyn confronts him about how he's been avoiding everyone and he finally relents and lets her drag him out a few times. It's not fun but it's not not-fun. She points cute guys out to him and he can appreciate the aesthetic but he's not interested. He wonders if he'll ever be, or if he's just broken. 

When Thor comes home for Christmas break, Loki doesn't meet him at the door like he has every time in the past. He goes out with Sigyn to the mall all day and they smoke up in her car and then get smoothies and buy makeup and play with puppies at the pet store and see a movie. 

Thor's door is closed by the time Loki gets home and he's both relieved and disappointed.

He finally sees Thor at breakfast the next morning. He thought he would be ready, but the second his eyes fall on him he feels like he's been run through with a red hot sword. He grabs a glass of orange juice and practically runs out of the kitchen, Thor's eyes searing into the back of his head.

They both try to act nonchalant on Christmas morning for their parents’ benefit. Loki wonders if they're fooling anyone but themselves.

Thor eventually ambushes him a few days after Christmas. Frigga and Odin are at work. Loki has taken to sneaking through the basement to flee the house but this time Thor is waiting for him, blocking the door to the outside with every inch of his six foot three frame.

“Excuse me,” Loki mutters, trying to push past him. But Thor is immovable, a boulder in his path. “Don't be an asshole,” Loki says.

Thor's eyes are so blue. They pull Loki's in like magnets.

“I like...this,” he says, gesturing at Loki's face. “It looks good on you.”

Loki stares at him.

“Please stop avoiding me,” Thor says. Loki is drawn up so tight he feels like he might implode into nothing, but it's either that or crumble into a heap, so he clenches his jaw even harder and tries to forge ahead.

“I can't do that,” he says. “If you're not going to move I'll just leave the front way.”

“No, wait,” Thor says, his cool facade cracking. “I just...I miss you. We've been friends longer than we've been...the other thing. Please.”

Loki feels his eyes soften. “You said yourself, we can't go back.”

Thor takes a deep breath. “But maybe...we could go forward?”

Loki scoffs. “What does that even mean?”

“I don't- I just-” Thor runs his hands through his hair in frustration. “Don't you miss me too?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then why-”

“It doesn't matter that I miss you. It doesn't matter that I love you more than anything else on this godforsaken planet. None of it matters because this is _impossible_ -”

Thor’s lips on his own cut him off mid-sentence. Loki wants to scream, to beat his fists on Thor's chest, to be anywhere other than here. But more than that he wants _this_. Thor crowds him against the wall, trailing hot kisses down his neck, bringing Loki's legs up to wrap around his waist. Loki digs his nails into Thor's shoulder and bites back a whine.

They both hear a soft gasp from the stairs and they freeze.

It's their mother.

“I came home early,” she says, dazed. “I'll just. Ok.” She turns around mechanically and lets the door swing shut behind her.

Grief and shame crash over him in a tidal wave and he's drowning.

“Lo, baby, breathe,” Thor is saying and Loki realizes he's hyperventilating. He grabs Thor's shirt and pushes his forehead into his chest. His heart beats frantically in his ears.

“Oh my god,” he says, over and over, babbling. Thor is rubbing his back. Suddenly the touch is suffocating and Loki shoves Thor away and stumbles to the door, wrenching it open.

He can barely start the car his hands are shaking so badly. Thor is running after him, but Loki peels out of the driveway and takes off.

He drives, his brain full of endless static.

He finds himself at the lake. It’s frozen over but in his mind he can still detect the damp algal freshwater smell and it feels calming, grounding. He sits on the shore, shivering, and tosses pebbles at the lake to see them skitter across the ice. Do the fish sleep? he wonders. Does the ice change the light, the sound, of their cool dark world? Do they even know it’s there? He thinks he might like to be a fish, nosing around in the chilly aquatic depths with the lakeweed and the tiny shrimp and blissfully unaware of things like brothers.

His phone buzzes at his hip. It’s Thor, of course. His message pops up across the lock screen. 

_where are you we’re worried sick please come home mom isn’t mad_

Loki makes a noise with his tongue against his teeth and contemplates throwing his phone at the lake too. Instead he stays there until the sun starts going down, washing the sky in orange and pink, stays until his body is as hard and cold on the outside as he feels on the inside. He remembers how he used to feel like his love for Thor was a forest fire and isn’t it ironic; they burned up after all and all that’s left is this freezing husk.

Buzz.

_dad’s home. I think she told him. he doesn’t look mad he looks tired_

_he says he has something to tell us but you need to hear it in person_

_loki please_

_are you ok_

_even if you don’t want to come home let me know if you’re ok_

Loki stares at his phone until the words don’t even make sense anymore. Finally he taps out _I’m ok_ and hits send.

Thor writes him back immediately.

_:) :) :) thank you_

_I love you_

_seriously mom and dad are ok_

_I swear_

Loki drives around in circles for another hour. He gets a taco from the drive through and eats it in the parking lot. He doesn’t want to go home but he doesn’t know what else to do. Parking the car a couple blocks away and trying to sneak in through the basement seems like an ok idea, but Thor can apparently read his mind and he’s waiting there with his head in his hands and his hair falling around his face.

He looks up when Loki comes in and his face breaks into a smile that lights up the whole room. Loki almost buckles at the knees.

“You came home,” Thor says. He grabs Loki’s hand and tugs him upstairs. “Come on, they’re in the living room.”

Loki pulls his hand away and plants himself on the steps.

“I - give me a minute.”

Thor stands on the step above him and kisses him on the forehead. “It’s ok. I promise.”

Loki closes his eyes and shivers. He knows he should push Thor away but allowing himself this comfort feels so good he can’t summon the necessary ire.

“Ok.”

They stand there with their foreheads touching until Loki can force his breathing to calm down.

“Ok.”

Thor takes his hand again and leads him upstairs. Loki tries to free himself but Thor just clutches his fist tighter.

“I said it was ok,” he says.

Odin and Frigga are sitting on the couch with a photo album spread out on the table in front of them. Thor was right, Odin looks tired. Frigga smiles at them, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“My beautiful boys,” she says. “Come here.”

She turns the photo album towards them. “You’ve never seen these before,” she says softly. “I want you to look very carefully.”

The album is page after page of baby Thor. He was a fat little baby, his arms so pudgy that the line at his wrists made his hands look like screw-on doll hands. As they turn the pages, they watch Thor learn to sit, pull himself up, take his first steps. The album ends at Thor’s first birthday, a tired-looking Frigga standing behind the cake holding a small dark-haired baby in her arms.

“Did you notice?” she says softly.

“Notice what?” says Thor, but Loki is frantically flipping backwards, pausing at every picture that has Frigga in it. In all of them she is slim, her normal size and shape.

“You were never pregnant,” Loki says flatly.

“No,” Frigga mouths nearly soundlessly, shaking her head.

“But that means -” Thor says.

“Yes,” Odin says, the first time he’s spoken all evening. “Loki is adopted.”


	6. crash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again.

Thor feels happiness well up inside him and explode into effervescent bubbles, but they die as abruptly as the smile on his face when Loki staggers white-faced into the kitchen; retching noises come through the doorway. Frigga's hand on his arm stops Thor from rushing after him.

“I'll go to him,” Odin says. “He should hear it from me.”

Thor and his mother sit on the couch with their hands clasped tightly together. They can hear the voices from the other room but can't quite make out the words. The air is awkward, tense. Even the light seems like it's shining wrong, making shadows that aren't usually there, illuminating dust and scratches on the floor that Thor has never noticed before.

“Am I adopted too?” Thor asks. He almost hopes the answer is yes, that maybe his parents couldn't have children of their own, that he and Loki could share this.

“No,” Frigga says. She strokes his hand with her thumb.

“Oh.”

They hear a clatter from the kitchen like someone smacked a counter full of dishes. Thor listens for a minute but still can't make out the conversation.

“Why?” he says.

“My pregnancy with you was very difficult. The doctors told me that getting pregnant again would be suicide.” Frigga sniffles and looks at the ceiling. “I didn't feel like our family was done though, and when your father came home from a business trip with a baby I didn't ask very many questions.”

“You always told us we were Irish twins.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you just tell us from the beginning?”

“We didn't think it was important. We didn't want Loki to feel different.”

“Why are you telling us now?”

“You know why.”

Thor can hear the pitch of Loki's voice go higher in the kitchen and he winces.

“Mom, I -”

“I always knew you boys were more affectionate with each other than most brothers are. I can't say I'm happy. But I'm not surprised. We thought it might help if you knew you were...not related by blood.”

Thor feels his throat go tight.

“Even if we were I'd still feel the same way about him.”

“I know. That's why...that's why we're telling you.”

“I'm sorry,” he manages. His jaw aches from clenching it.

Loki bursts back into the room and he's yelling now, tears in his eyes and voice gone stuffy and nasally.

“...because no matter how much you claim to love me, as soon as I become difficult for you you're like ‘well you're not really related to us anyway.’ No, fuck you. Fuck. You. Fuck.”

Loki grabs his coat off the hook in the hallway and backs up to the door.

“No, Loki -” Odin is saying.

“All of you stay away from me,” Loki says shakily, holding his hand out like it will physically stop them. “I'm out.” Thor takes an abortive step towards him and Loki casts him one desperate look, his eyebrows drawn up in a reverse vee, and then slams the door behind him.

The next day is Saturday, and Thor spends it avoiding his parents and sending unreciprocated text messages to Loki. The fact that life is going on mostly as normal, that he still has to do things like eat and pee and sleep, seems surreal and bizarre. Loki finally texts him back.

_god stop_

_I’m fine ok, it’s not like I’m suicidal_

_I’m at Sigyn’s_

_just leave me alone_

Thor feels such a rush of relief that it leaves him light-headed.

Winter break crawls by. Thor is pretty sure Loki snuck in once a few days after he left and grabbed some stuff, clothes and his phone charger and a few other things, but other than that he doesn’t come back. 

His father looks grim all the time. His mother’s face is puffy from crying. Thor doesn’t want to talk to them or have anything to do with them except maybe shake them both until their teeth rattle. _You did this to us_ he wants to scream, no matter how true it is or isn’t. 

Would knowing Loki was adopted have made a difference? Did he love Loki in spite of their brotherhood, or - maybe - because of it?

The thought is confusing and painful and Thor shoves it out of his head immediately.

He has to go back to school at the end of January and he’s happy for the distraction. His classes don’t interest him any more, but at least they’re something to do that isn’t pining over Loki. He falls back in with Fandral, Hogun, Volstagg, and Sif and it’s nice to pretend that he’s a normal guy with normal problems, laughing at raunchy jokes, complaining about professors, staying up too late and falling asleep in morning classes. At home everything had reminded him of his brother’s absence, but here he can breathe just a little bit.

He still texts Loki almost every day. He never writes back. Thor doesn’t even know if Loki reads them, but he sends them anyway. He can’t not.

He still remembers the happiness he felt the instant that Odin had broken the news. The wild hope that this meant that everything was ok, that they could be together. Of course the shame had followed it, shame that he had taken joy in something that obviously crushed Loki. But he chases the memory of that happiness, tries to grasp it with spasming fingers, hoping that Loki will come to the same conclusion eventually and come back to him.

The thought that it could be over for good isn’t even worth contemplating.

Thor ignores his parents and Loki ignores him all through the winter and straight into spring. Classes end at the beginning of May and then there’s a week of purgatory before finals. 

He stays up all night studying for his last final, too keyed up to sleep. He’s supposed to drive home right after the test. The dorms shut down that afternoon for the summer so he couldn’t stay and take a nap even if he wanted to.

The highway is hypnotizing and his eyes keep slamming shut. He pulls off at a rest stop on the highway and gets the biggest coffee that they have, then turns on the radio obnoxiously loud and cranks the AC up to full blast. He’s caffeinated, it’s loud, it’s cold. 

It’s not enough. 

He dozes off about twenty miles from home and drives into a guardrail at 75 mph.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HE'S NOT DEAD OK NOBODY FREAK OUT


	7. perspective

Loki rests his forehead against the cool glass of the car window and closes his eyes. Sigyn is driving. She reaches over without looking and squeezes his leg and he rests his hand on top of hers, grateful for the support. It rained that morning and everything is still wet. He feels weirdly calm, mind empty, floating in a bubble filled by the quiet sounds of the the water spray being kicked up by the tires, the click of the turn signal, the empty water bottle rolling around in the back seat.

“There’s a Starbucks around the corner,” Sigyn finally says. “They’ve got free wifi. I’ll wait for you there until you tell me to come get you, ok?”

Loki nods.

“I can be there in three minutes flat.”

“Thank you.”

She squeezes his leg again and then she’s turning into the hospital drive.

“Ok,” she says earnestly. “Take as long as you want. I have my phone charger and everything, I’ll be fine.”

Loki smiles thinly and gives her a one armed hug. “You’re the best,” he says and he tries to put as much warmth into his voice as he can. He sounds distant to himself but Sigyn smiles back anyway.

All the hospital corridors look the same and even though the woman at the desk gives him directions he almost gets lost finding Thor’s room. He comes around the last corner and sees Odin and Frigga standing in the hall talking. His throat goes dry.

Frigga notices him first and she turns to him with a stricken look on her face.

“Loki, darling,” she says tearfully.

Odin’s tone is neutral. “We had hoped you would come.”

“I didn’t come for you,” Loki says with all the spite he can manage.

“Loki, your father and I -”

Loki feels something snap in his chest. “ _He’s not my father_ ,” he snarls. “Excuse me.”

He shoves past them into Thor’s room, not daring to look at their faces. He stops short at the sight in front of him and all the anger drains out of his body, straight through the bottoms of his feet, and the sudden vacuum leaves him hollow.

Thor is asleep. Someone has inexpertly put his hair back in a low ponytail, exposing his swollen nose and two black eyes. His gown has fallen open slightly and Loki can see his chest is purple too, and his left arm has a cast from knuckle to elbow. A machine next to the bed beeps and clicks softly. Tears spring to Loki’s eyes immediately and he rubs them on the sleeve of his jacket. In his mind Thor is so large, physically of course, but also in the energy he puts out, his ambiance or aura or whatever you want to call it; when Thor is in a room he fills the entire thing. And here he looks so tiny and fragile on this hospital bed and it's _wrong_.

There’s a chair next to the bed and Loki sits in it, taking Thor’s right hand and interlacing their fingers.

“Hey,” he whispers.

Thor stirs slightly and Loki grasps his hand tighter. 

“Hey,” he says again.

Thor’s lips part and his eyes crack open, unfocused, until they land on Loki and suddenly they sharpen, and then Thor is beaming and wincing and Loki is pulling Thor’s hand to his face to cover it in kisses and tears.

“You’re ok,” Loki chokes out. “Oh my god you’re ok.”

“You’re here,” Thor says, pushing Loki’s hair away from his face. “Are you here? Am I dreaming?”

“I’m here.”

“I didn't think - I mean I didn't know -”

Loki's chest goes tight. Thor is made of strong decisive emotions like love and loyalty and anger, not sneaking yielding emotions like doubt, and Loki knows that he is the cause and he hates himself for it.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I'm so sorry. I had to - of course I came.”

“Baby,” Thor says helplessly, then “shit, sorry, habit, I -”

“Shh,” Loki says, and climbs into Thor's bed, stretching out next to him and pillowing his face on his elbow. 

Thor looks shocked. “People will see.”

“I don't care anymore.”

“Now I know I'm definitely dreaming,” Thor says.

“I almost lost you,” Loki says, skimming the fingertips of his right hand over Thor's cheek, careful not to touch any bruises. “Where can I touch you that doesn't hurt?”

“Everything hurts. But you can keep touching there.”

“How about here?” Loki whispers, and he puts a gentle finger on Thor’s lips.

“Loki,” Thor says, a wretched, wrecked look on his face. 

“I almost _lost_ you,” Loki says again. “I haven’t...I haven’t lost you, have I? I understand if you don’t want me around anymore after...everything.”

“You idiot,” Thor says and kisses him.

Loki whimpers and cups Thor’s face closer to him. For the last half year he’s missed this physical affection, so much, but more than that he’s missed his _brother_.

“If I knew all it would take to get you back was a car accident I would’ve crashed months ago,” Thor says, smiling.

“ _Oh my god,_ Thor,” Loki gasps, and a horrified giggle escapes his throat. “Don’t you ever do this to me again, I swear to god. Don’t. Jesus.” He swallows and his voice is serious now, lower. “When I thought you might be dead it was the worst feeling I’ve ever had in my entire life, worse than anything in this whole crap-filled toilet of the last year. I...it gave me some...perspective.” He closes his eyes. “I’m so sorry. For everything.”

“I promise not to get into any more car accidents if you promise to stop breaking up with me and trying to disown me.”

“Asshole,” Loki says with a tearful smile. “Deal.” He puts his finger on Thor’s lips again and stares at them. “I never stopped loving you. Please. Never doubt that I love you. And...we always...I mean. Ugh. This is hard to say.” Thor kisses his finger and Loki swallows. “You’re still my brother, ok? Oh my god it’s so fucked up. You’re my brother and I love you and I’m in love with you and I tried to stop but I can’t so let’s...can we...”

“Yes,” Thor says. He kisses Loki’s palm and then Loki cups his cheek again and leans in for another kiss and it’s perfect, so perfect.

A sudden knock on the door sends Loki’s heart hammering and a nurse comes in but she doesn’t even bat an eyelid.

“Visiting hours are over,” she says. “Your guest can come back tomorrow.”

Loki starts to get up and Thor grabs his wrist. “Please come back tomorrow,” he says. “I want to see you.”

“I will,” Loki promises.

“I love you.”

Loki smiles. He loves Thor so much in that moment that he feels the fire inside him fan to life again. He’d thought it was out, but it turns out it had only been lying there banked and waiting. This time he was going to be ready for it. This time he wouldn’t burn up. Hopefully.


	8. oxygen

Afterwards Thor isn't sure if Loki really visited him or if he just dreamed it. His pain meds make him a little loopy. And Loki had been so sweet, just like he is in Thor's memories of before this whole mess had started. Maybe the visit is just wishful thinking.

Sometimes Thor wishes they had never kissed. That's where it all began, really. If they hadn't started down that road they could have just stayed regular normal platonic loving brothers and they'd still be in each other's lives and everything would be fine and nothing would hurt.

He knows the thought is bullshit but sometimes it feels nice to pretend.

The truth is they'd always been too close. It was never going to be sustainable. Their bond demanded either more or less than they had been giving it, and they chose more and now they had to live with the consequences.

His mother comes first thing in the morning and brings him a new cell phone and food and books.

“Are you sure it's ok if I leave?” she asks, concerned, and Thor assures her that he’ll heal just fine whether she's there or not and that she can't afford another day off work. “If Loki comes back…” she trails off. “Just...tell him I love him. And...he can come home whenever he wants.”

Thor's pulse quickens. It hadn't been a dream.

He starts trying to figure out the new phone and he texts Loki right away.

_Hey it's me :)  
Your annoying older sibling  
My old phone for smashed  
*got  
Mom was here earlier but she's gone now  
I know you'd probably rather not see her  
Can you come visit me  
I know it's a school day for you. But after_

He naps on and off all day, attempts to concentrate on a book but gives up after ten minutes of trying and failing to make his eyes and brain focus together.

Mostly he thinks about the future.

The future is usually Loki's thing, sometimes - honestly, probably most times - to his detriment. Thor prefers to live in the now. Maybe this is another way they fit together, he thinks, maybe they need to help pull each other towards a more useful medium.

He eats the snacks Frigga brought and counts the tiles in the ceiling. He picks at his cast. He bites his fingernails down to nubs. He keeps touching his nose because it feels big and weird. He uses the front camera on the new phone to look at his face and immediately resolves not to do that again for a good long while. 

He knows they want him here for observation for another day or maybe two but it's stultifying.

Finally, after what feels like a century, Loki comes.

His face breaks into a smile when he sees Thor. It's lovely, all white teeth and crinkling eyes, and it's the happiest Thor has seen him since last summer. He aches with nostalgia and regret.

“C’mere,” Thor says and pats the bed next to him. They arrange themselves carefully, trying not to jostle Thor too much, and end up on their sides facing each other. Loki tentatively tucks his head under Thor's chin.

“I missed this,” Loki says softly.

“Me too.” Thor wants to stroke Loki's hair but his cast is in the way. He settles for resting his hand on Loki's hip.

“How are you feeling today?”

“Pretty ok, all things considered. Better now that you're here.”

Loki kisses the hollow at the base of his neck and Thor gets goosebumps.

Thor still can't get over the feeling that none of this is quite real. What he's about to say isn't going to help.

“So I've been thinking,” he starts. “About all of the things you said and wrote about how we had no possible future together.”

Loki stiffens slightly.

“And they're true,” Thor says.

Loki is turning away from him, sitting up. “God I am such a fucking idiot -”

“No wait!” Thor says desperately. “That's not what I meant!” He grabs for Loki's hand.

“We just - we just have to - we're going to have to work really hard, ok? And I have a bunch of ideas. But they're crazy. And - I need to know you're in it a hundred percent. That you're not...that you're not going to leave me again.” Thor is breathing heavily now and Loki is staring at him. “Please don't leave me again,” he says in a small voice.

Loki is quiet for a long time and tears start to gather in Thor's eyes. He feels like he's been crying for a year. He wonders if he'll have to cry for the rest of his life too. He wonders if the inevitable dehydration will be enough to kill him. He wonders if he cares.

“Do all brothers do this?” Loki says finally, an echo of a long ago conversation.

“Do what?” Thor says, holding his breath.

“This,” Loki says, gesturing broadly, and he's smiling, and Thor feels relief and love wash over him in a wave.

“We do.” 

Loki leans down and kisses him.

“I don't want to leave you,” he says. “Tell me your ideas.”

Thor smiles. “Ok, but first help me up, I need to pee really bad.”

He shuffles back from the toilet and Loki is arching an eyebrow at his hair. “You really need a new stylist,” he says. “Your hair looks terrible.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been in bed for a week. And it’s hard to put my hair up with this stupid cast.”

“Come sit here. Give me that elastic. And tell me your glorious foolhardy plan.”

Thor sits on the bed and Loki sits behind him and starts to comb his hair, softly, gently, working the tangles out from the bottom up. Thor shivers.

“Ok, so you didn’t apply for any art schools, right?”

Loki’s hand stills. “Yeah. I was kind of...preoccupied.”

“And I don’t really give a shit about college. It was always dad who wanted me to go and I just did it because I was supposed to.” 

Loki is done with the tangles and now he’s just running the comb through Thor’s hair smoothly and rhythmically.

“Ok.”

“So let’s forget about school. It’s only going to keep us apart. Let’s...move out. Move in. Together. People who know us won’t think it’s weird because we’re brothers and rent is expensive.”

Loki puts the comb down and digs his fingertips into Thor’s hair, massaging his scalp, lightly scratching. Thor leans into it like a cat. Tingles run down his spine.

“I helped dad’s friend rewire their house that one time, do you remember? He said I had a knack for it. I bet I could be an electrician easy. I like working with my hands anyway. And I wouldn’t be stuck behind a desk. I think I’d like it. And you can do your tattoo thing and build up your portfolio and sell your art and stuff.”

Loki has started gathering his hair, separating it into strands for braiding.

“We can move to a city. One where no one knows us. We don’t look alike. We have the same last name but we can just pretend we’re married. No one will know.”

Loki makes a small noise, but Thor can’t tell if it’s surprise or disdain or what. Thor closes his eyes.

“I mean we’ll still need to be a little sneaky. And dishonest. But I think it could maybe work.”

Loki finishes tying off the braid and rests his hands on Thor’s shoulders and his forehead against Thor’s back.

“I’ve been doing some research,” Loki says. “Apparently in most states it’s technically illegal to sleep with your brother. Like, actual jail time. Even if you’re related by adoption but not blood.”

Thor feels slightly sick. “Oh.”

“I don’t want to live in fear.”

“I -” Thor can’t keep talking.

“Which is why,” Loki continues, “I also looked up if you can legally get unadopted. And you can.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Thor says. He doesn’t know what to feel. It could be the answer to their problem but it feels like a rejection, the edges of it sharp and painful. 

“I don’t...I don’t know when I’m going to be able to forgive them,” Loki says, and he doesn’t need to elaborate who he means by _them_. His voice sounds tearful now. “Or even if I can. And no matter what this is going to be so hard. I’m not worth all this. You should be able to have a normal life and a spouse and kids and -”

“Stop it,” Thor says. “Stop saying you’re not worth it. You’re worth everything. You’ve been the other half of my heart since I was a year old.”

Loki slips his hands around Thor’s waist and Thor covers them both with his good right hand. He can feel Loki trembling against his back.

“We just have to stick together,” Thor says. “Do you really want to get unadopted? Mom and dad still love you. Mom told me to tell you that this morning actually, and that you can come home whenever you want.”

“I don’t know,” Loki says. “I don’t know.” He hugs Thor tighter. “You’re always my family though.”

Thor smiles. He’s always thought of Loki as his synergy, his chemically bonded partner. Now he realizes they’re like oxygen atoms: dangerous, unstable, and ready to react when alone, but when they bump into each other they bond instantly into a happy stable little O2 molecule.

“So…” he says. “Is crazy plan a go?”

Loki laughs. “Crazy plan is a go.”


	9. and at last, summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we end as we began, with Loki. (the first paragraph of this chapter is a mirror of the first paragraph of the story)

It's 1:32 on a Friday afternoon the summer he turns 18 when Loki officially moves in with his brother. Thor is bringing boxes in and Loki is cutting them open, when he looks up to see Thor wiping the sweat from his forehead, rubbing his hands on his jeans, his hair falling out of its messy bun, and it's a sight Loki never imagined he might see and he is completely struck dumb for the second time in his life.

He gets up from his spot on the floor and goes over to Thor and wraps his arms around him.

“Hey,” Thor says, hugging him and rubbing his back. “What's up?”

Loki nuzzles into his neck and plants kisses along his Adam's apple and up his jaw to his lips. He worries Thor's lower lip with his teeth.

Thor makes a noise and runs one hand up into Loki's hair and the other down to the small of his back, pulling their hips flush.

“We can do this whenever we want now,” Loki says between kisses.

“Mmm,” Thor says. “Good. Because I want to. Now.”

The bed is just a mattress on the floor and they collapse on it together. Thor moves over Loki and lifts his shirt, kissing his stomach down to his waistband, and then Loki's pants are off, and Thor is licking and bobbing, and Loki is coming undone.

Loki lets himself make noise for the first time ever, really, and it seems to awaken something fierce in Thor. Loki comes moaning, and Thor shoves his own pants down and thrusts between Loki's thighs, rutting along the soft sensitive skin of his balls and his perineum and his hole, and it's so intimate that Loki gasps. 

“Oh my god,” he whimpers.

Afterwards they lay there kissing. “Do you ever think about…” Loki says.

“What?”

“About. Um. Sex. Us fucking. Like for real.”

“This is real.”

“You know what I mean.”

Thor kisses him once on the lips.

“I do know what you mean.”

“Well?”

“Of course I have. But I want...I want us to be sure. And do it because we want to. Not because we think we have to.”

“I think I want you to fuck me,” Loki whispers. “I think I want that. A lot.”

Thor closes his eyes and gathers Loki to his chest, pressing their whole bodies together. “Yeah,” he murmurs into Loki's ear and Loki shudders. “Me too.”

It takes them all weekend to unpack and get everything set up. Their only furniture is the bed mattress and the old couch from the basement. Frigga had insisted that Thor take it, saying “if my kids are going to be idiots they can at least do it with a place to sit.” Loki loves that couch. It's been consecrated with their bodies since the beginning and it feels like an old friend, so even though he's loathe to take anything from Frigga and Odin he doesn't really complain about it.

They go shopping for things like toilet paper and dishwasher detergent. It's weird and nice. They pass the pharmacy section and Thor picks up a bottle of lube and Loki blushes all the way up to his hair and down to his shoulders but he nods. He hides it under a pack of sponges in the cart and feels ridiculous and fluttery about it for the rest of the shopping trip.

The one bedroom apartment they're renting is kind of old and shabby but it's clean and everything works and they’re determined to keep it that way. The landlady seems like a reasonable person and likes to wink at them a lot. Loki tries not to feel embarrassed every time she looks at him. He hopes they don’t run into her on the way home.

They buy one pan, two plates, two cups. Thor had started working odd jobs immediately once he got out of the hospital so that they would have a little bit of money to start with but it's not a lot and they can't afford much yet. He'd even had to work through Loki's graduation, and truthfully Loki wishes he had had as good an excuse to get out of it himself.

On Monday he brings a portfolio to a tattoo place a few blocks away and they're impressed with the art but less impressed that he's never had any practical experience. He begs and wheedles his way into an apprenticeship. It's mostly doing everyone else's bitch work, but they agree to pay him so he counts it as a win. 

He texts Sigyn to let her know he’s doing alright. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever be able to repay her and her parents for taking him in for the last six months, for giving him a place to live and space to breath and time to think. He’d probably be dead in a ditch if not for them; he tries not to think about the what ifs too much because they get dark pretty fast. He wonders if a thank you card would be stupid, or maybe cookies, or he could draw them something and frame it? Hell, maybe he could give them all free tattoos, that would be fun and completely appropriate.

Thor is as good as his word and by the end of the week he charms his way into his own apprenticeship with a local home improvement company as an electrician. His days get busy, and Loki's nights at the tattoo shop often run late, so they have less time together in the evenings than they had hoped. But the time is _theirs_. And they don't have to sneak, or hide, and they can do everything or nothing, and no one can gainsay them.

The first time they try to have sex it doesn't go very well. They read about what to do and even watch a video tutorial they find, but Thor is shaky and clumsy and Loki is so nervous that he can't relax enough.

He cries afterwards. “Why can't I do this?” he says. “The first time is supposed to be magic. Everyone talks about how amazing sex is and I can't even fucking do it at all.”

“Lo, baby, no. No. It's ok.” Thor kisses his forehead, strokes his hair.

“I want to do this for you,” Loki says miserably.

“Hey. Don't worry about me. You should want to do it for you.”

“That too,” he sniffles.

The second time is better. Loki relaxes enough this time, but it's strange and even though there's pleasure there's also pain, and Loki can't come even with Thor's hand, and Thor has to reassure him again afterwards.

The third time is magic.

They’ve been flirting by text message all day and Loki is already good and flustered by the time he gets home from work. Thor pounces on him at the door and kisses him breathless.

“I have something new I want to try,” he says, his eyes twinkling with excitement.

He brings Loki to the couch, their couch, and pushes him onto his back. He removes Loki’s clothing piece by piece, exploring each new area as it’s uncovered with lips and hands, kissing and sucking and nipping and caressing, until Loki is a squirming mass of need. Thor bites his way up the inside of Loki’s thigh and Loki can feel his muscles spasm involuntarily. He expects Thor to take him in his mouth, but Thor noses into his crack and lands a kiss directly on the opening he finds there.

Loki giggles a little nervously and then Thor flicks his tongue out and the giggle changes into a moan. His nerves flee as he sees how much Thor is into it, humming and making little noises of his own, looking up at Loki through his lashes, kneading Loki’s thighs with his huge hands. 

Loki throws his head back and sinks into it, loving Thor’s tongue as it works him loose, loving his thick fingers as they stroke into him. He’s so blissed out he doesn’t even register at what point Thor grabs the lube and coats them both with it.

“Want to try now?” Thor says huskily.

Loki can only nod, his teeth between his lips. Thor lines up and pushes slowly, so slowly. The familiar resistance is there and Loki almost wants to cry with frustration, but suddenly it gives and Thor is in. He keeps going agonizingly slowly until finally he’s all the way there and they’re both shaking. Loki has never felt so full in his life, and he’s full of _Thor_ , and he wants to stay this way forever.

“Are you ok?” Thor whispers.

“Uh huh.”

“Can I move?”

“...yeah.”

It takes them a few minutes to find a rhythm, but when they do everything finally clicks. Loki wraps his arms and his legs around Thor and rocks up to meet every thrust. Thor buries his face in Loki’s neck and bites and Loki whines high in his throat. Thor’s breathing, god, Loki could listen to that for days, the voiceless grunts and the soft _ahs_ and occasionally a low moan that sets everything on fire even more than it already is and drives Loki completely out of his mind.

They’re bucking wildly now and Thor moves to get a better grip and Loki moves to give him better access and suddenly Thor’s cock is hitting _something_ inside of him and Loki falls apart completely. The sounds of his own babbling fill his ears, _yes, oh my god, fuck, ahh, jesus, oh god Thor_ and normally he would be embarrassed but right now he’s lost somewhere in the stratosphere and he can’t bring himself to care.

His cock is leaking all over his stomach and Thor rubs his hands in it and uses its slickness to work up and down Loki’s shaft and it’s too much and with a cry Loki bursts out of the stratosphere and into the stars.

Thor follows in three strokes and they collapse boneless together, Thor draped over Loki, Loki running his hands over Thor’s broad back, his ass. Loki clenches a little, experimentally of course, and Thor yelps.

“That was…” Loki says.

“Yeah.” Loki can hear the smile in Thor’s voice. “It seems like it was good for you this time?”

“That’s an understatement,” Loki says. 

Thor slips out of him and sits back on his heels. “We made kind of a mess.”

Loki feels himself smile. “Yeah. It was pretty worth it though, huh?”

Thor smiles back. He kisses his own finger and touches it to Loki’s forehead. “I want to kiss you but I think I should probably brush my teeth first.”

Loki laughs, full and deep, and Thor waits for him to stop, bemused.

“You know what?” says Loki finally.

“Mm?”

“I really love this couch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnd that's all she wrote. I can't believe this started out as a short one-shot diversion! I'm gonna miss these crazy kids. Thanks for reading everyone. :)


End file.
